COOKING UP A STORM

Patient customers and excellent food at Thai restaurant help to dispel indigestion after outburst about Cape storms and white monopoly capital

Don’t let your guard down, dear reader. Just don’t. Because at that very point you think you have heard everything, that you think you have seen it all, a minor Gupta-paid politician with seven followers will come along and surprise you.

There I was, wondering what I could do to help the people of the Western Cape as wind, fire and storms battered their homes, when along came Andile Mngxitama, leader of the Black First Land First organisation (which is him, a laptop, a fax and seven people who should be doing something more meaningful with their lives).

Then Mngxitama unleashed an opinion article about the storms. This was the sort of thing that might lead to you using strong language and bemoaning the state of our education system and that of Wits University in particular (Mngxitama is an alumnus and a former lecturer there). Our man claimed that “white-owned monopoly capital” is to blame for the storms that ravaged the Cape.

Mngxitama, who has taken on the “white monopoly capital” narrative with a fervour that ignores the fact that it was manufactured by British public relations firm Bell Pottinger (for his information, a white capitalist business), ranted and raved about white capital’s horrors.

Quoth he: “It may strike many as an outlandish claim that the Cape Storms are a direct product of global capitalism and its local representatives we know as white monopoly capital . . .

“Truth is for the last 500 years or so, capitalists have not just destroyed people through the long holocaust of the cross-atlantic slavery where they came and captured people as if we were animals to enslave. At the same time, for profits, the same evil forces assaulted nature. What we see today is the ecological costs of capitalism and racism.”

Anywhere else he would be in an institution or in jail. Here he gets paid by the Guptas and appears on television. Bless this country.

One shouldn’t complain, though. We voted for Jacob Zuma after he was alleged to have taken bribes from arms dealers and violated his friend’s daughter.

Anyway, I hope all South Africans of sense (not Mngxitama), and some means, will continue to help those affected by the fires and storms.

The situation in many parts of the Western Cape is horrific. Don’t be deterred by the race-baiting of the Mngxitamas of this world.

These storms and the misguided talk around them made me a bit sad until I remembered my recent visit to Thailand, a country that had survived a tsunami and managed to rebuild itself. We, too, can rebuild. So off I went to Thai Meals in Cyrildene — a Thai restaurant tucked in all alone among the Chinese restaurants in the area.

Cyrildene is a bit rough around the edges, so you don’t go for ambience. Service was extremely slow. Yet my lovely wife and kids and I were the only people who seemed on edge about that. Everyone else was a regular. They seemed calm as they waited.

We realised when our food came why it takes so long. It’s all cooked with fresh ingredients and had been done with love, pride and care. My daughter’s fish was sumptuous, my curry divine, and everyone at the table sighed with appreciation when we all tucked in.

From the outside this place is not very inviting. The reward is the food. It’s absolutely delicious.

We realised when our food came why it takes so long. It’s all cooked with fresh ingredients and had been done with love, pride and care

Thai Meals ★★★½

20 Derrick Avenue Cyrildene, Johannesburg Tel: (011) 622-5560

★★★★★ Pravin Gordhan ★★★★ Excellent ★★★ Good ★★ Poor ★ Jacob Zuma/guptas